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I photographed invoices with my phone and some came out sideways; how do I fix them before combining them into a PDF?

Open each sideways photo in the rotate tool, press the 90 degree left or right button until the text stands upright, download it, then combine all the photos into one PDF. A right-angle turn moves the pixels exactly as they are, so the text loses no sharpness. And if you have already made the PDF and found sideways pages in it, do not go back to the photos: rotate the pages directly in the PDF page rotator.

Published · 3 min read

Why some photos come out sideways

When you shoot a sheet lying on a desk with the phone held flat above it, the phone struggles to tell which way is 'up' and saves some shots sideways. Sometimes the phone also stores the orientation only as a note inside the file, so the photo looks right in your gallery and sideways in another app. The tool applies that note first, so what you see in the preview is the true orientation of the pixels, and what you fix stays fixed everywhere.

Steps

  1. Sort your invoice photos and pick out only the sideways or upside down ones; upright ones need nothing.
  2. Open the Image rotator and flipper tool and choose the first sideways photo.
  3. Press 'Rotate 90° right' or 'Rotate 90° left' until the text reads from the top, or 'Rotate 180°' if it is upside down.
  4. Download, then repeat with the next photo. The tool handles one image at a time.
  5. Open Images to PDF, choose all the photos, fixed and upright, in the page order you want, and create the file.

What happens to the photo's dimensions

Worked example

A 4032 × 3024 landscape phone photo turned 90 degrees becomes a 3024 × 4032 portrait, with no part of the sheet cut off.

An upside down photo turned 180 degrees keeps its dimensions.

You do not need to think about the canvas option here: with 'Expand to fit', the default, the dimensions swap automatically and nothing is cut. Avoid 'Original size, clip' for document photos, because at 90 degrees it cuts off the top and bottom of the sheet.

Which format for document photos?

  • The original format, usually JPEG from a phone, is fine for invoice photos. Saving at quality 92 does not affect how readable the text is, and it keeps the PDF a reasonable size.
  • PNG is lossless but makes phone photos much heavier, so the PDF grows and may be awkward to email.
  • EXIF data such as location is removed from the rotated photos, which is a plus if the file is going to someone outside your business.

If the PDF already exists

Do not delete it and start again from the photos. The Rotate PDF pages tool turns chosen pages inside the file and leaves the rest as they are, which is far quicker when only two or three pages are sideways.

Common questions

Can I rotate several photos at once?

No, the image rotator handles one photo at a time. If there are many, combine them into a PDF first, then rotate the sideways pages in the PDF rotator.

Does rotating make the text less clear?

Turns of 90 and 180 degrees move the pixels as they are, with no smoothing, so the text stays as it was photographed.

The invoice is slightly tilted, not sideways. Should I fix it?

You can type a small angle in the angle field, but it softens the text slightly and leaves empty corners. For a readable document, a slight tilt is usually not worth it.